“That is, quite frankly, the only way we’re going to be able to slow it down, and the more we can slow it down, the more we can protect our health service in terms of the critical capacities of the need for those who do get sick.”

The minister told RTÉ Morning Ireland that it will take another 10 days to fully ramp up lab services across Ireland.

He admitted that the Government is seeing supply constraints similar to other countries across the world.

“The situation we’re facing here is not in any way unique to Ireland. I’m very satisfied that the health service is doing everything humanly possible to ramp up testing,” he said.

“In addition to that, and importantly, the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) yesterday adopted a recommendation from the chief medical officer (Tony Holohan) to further improve contact tracing.